Ayn Rand famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
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The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it.
-- Ayn Rand -
If a businessman makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences. If a bureaucrat makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences.
-- Ayn Rand -
Government 'help' to business is just as disastrous as government persecution... the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.
-- Ayn Rand -
Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.
-- Ayn Rand -
Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).
-- Ayn Rand -
Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours.
-- Ayn Rand -
A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.
-- Ayn Rand -
America's abundance was created not by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America's industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages, and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance- and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way.
-- Ayn Rand -
America's founding Ideal was the principle of individual rights. Nothing more - and nothing less.
-- Ayn Rand -
Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.
-- Ayn Rand -
Do not make the mistake of the ignorant who think that an individualist is a man who says: “I’ll do as I please at everybody else’s expense.†An individualist is a man who recognizes the inalienable individual rights of man—his own and those of others.
-- Ayn Rand -
Man—every man—is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others; he must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with the achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life.
-- Ayn Rand -
To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one's thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one's mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.
-- Ayn Rand -
The great creators - the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors - stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible... But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.
-- Ayn Rand -
So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?
-- Ayn Rand -
What is greatness? I will answer: it is the capacity to live by the three fundamental values of John Galt: reason, purpose, self-esteem.
-- Ayn Rand -
Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism.
-- Ayn Rand -
Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage-the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterologic al traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry.
-- Ayn Rand -
America's abundance was not created by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes.
-- Ayn Rand -
The man without a purpose is a man who drifts at the mercy of random feelings or unidentified urges and is capable of any evil, because he is totally out of control of his own life. In order to be in control of your life, you have to have a purpose-a productive purpose.
-- Ayn Rand -
America’s founding ideal was the principle of individual rights. Nothing more-and nothing less. The rest-everything that America achieved, everything she became, everything 'noble and just,' and heroic, and great, and unprecedented in human history-was the logical consequence of fidelity to that one principle.
-- Ayn Rand -
He had a big head and a face so ugly it became almost fascinating.
-- Ayn Rand -
If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - What would you tell him?" I…don't know. What…could he do? What would you tell him?" To shrug.
-- Ayn Rand -
To say 'I love you' one must first be able to say the 'I.'
-- Ayn Rand -
The Founding Fathers were neither passive, death-worshipin g mystics nor mindless, power-seeking looters; as a political group they were a phenomenon unprecedented in history: they were thinkers who were also men of action.
-- Ayn Rand -
Thanksgiving is a typically American holiday. In spite of its religious form (giving thanks to God for a good harvest), its essential, secular meaning is a celebration of successful production. It is a producers’ holiday. The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production. Abundance is (or was and ought to be) America’s pride-just as it is the pride of American parents that their children need never know starvation.
-- Ayn Rand -
Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter.
-- Ayn Rand -
The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow.
-- Ayn Rand -
Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.
-- Ayn Rand -
There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.
-- Ayn Rand -
The purpose of the law is not to prevent a future offense, but to punish the one actually committed.
-- Ayn Rand -
The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.
-- Ayn Rand -
Men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason can only exist as parasites on the thinking of others.
-- Ayn Rand -
The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.
-- Ayn Rand -
The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.
-- Ayn Rand -
What greater wealth is there than to own your life and to spend it on growing? Every living thing must grow. It can't stand still. It must grow or perish.
-- Ayn Rand -
The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.
-- Ayn Rand -
Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer - and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.
-- Ayn Rand -
The charming aspect of Christmas is the fact that it expresses good will in a cheerful, happy, benevolent, non-sacrificial way. One says: “Merry Christmasâ€-not “Weep and Repent.†And the good will is expressed in a material, earthly form-by giving presents to one's friends, or by sending them cards in token of remembrance . . . .
-- Ayn Rand -
We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.
-- Ayn Rand -
The right to vote is a consequence, not a primary cause, of a free social system - and its value depends on the constitutional structure implementing and strictly delimiting the voters' power; unlimited majority rule is an instance of the principle of tyranny.
-- Ayn Rand -
To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you are doing and that's real power.
-- Ayn Rand -
My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.
-- Ayn Rand -
Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live-that productive work is the process by which man's consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one's purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one's values-that all work is creative work if done by a thinking mind...
-- Ayn Rand -
Individualism regards man-every man-as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being.
-- Ayn Rand -
I owe nothing to my brothers, nor do I gather debts from them. I ask none to live for me, nor do I live for any others. I covet no man's soul, nor is my soul theirs to covet.
-- Ayn Rand -
In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.
-- Ayn Rand -
An inventor is a man who asks 'Why?' of the universe and lets nothing stand between the answer and his mind.
-- Ayn Rand -
Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it-that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life-that the vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions as facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as middle-man between your consciousness and your existence.
-- Ayn Rand -
To deal with men by force is as impractical as to deal with nature by persuasion.
-- Ayn Rand -
Statism needs war; a free country does not. Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by producing.
-- Ayn Rand -
Do not let your fire go out ... Do not let the Hero in your soul perish ... Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.
-- Ayn Rand -
Thinking men cannot be ruled; ambitious men do not stagnate.
-- Ayn Rand -
The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.
-- Ayn Rand -
Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority.
-- Ayn Rand -
I love you so much that nothing can matter to me - not even you...Only my love- not your answer. Not even your indifference
-- Ayn Rand -
But there are people who'll try to hurt you through the good they see in you--knowing that it's the good, needing it and punishing you for it. Don't let it break you when you discover that.
-- Ayn Rand -
You don't have to see through the eyes of others, hold onto yours, stand on your own judgment, you know that what is, is–say it aloud, like the holiest of prayers, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
-- Ayn Rand -
To say ‘I love you’ one must first know how to say the ‘I.’ The meaning of the ‘I’ is an independent, self-sufficient entity that does not exist for the sake of any other person. A person who exists only for the sake of his loved one is not an independent entity, but a spiritual parasite. The love of a parasite is worth nothing.
-- Ayn Rand -
The difference between a welfare state and a totalitarian state is a matter of time.
-- Ayn Rand -
To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self esteem, is capable of love - because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed value. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone
-- Ayn Rand -
Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched".
-- Ayn Rand -
Man's basic vice, the source of all his evils, is the act of unfocusing his mind, the suspension of his consciousness, which is not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know.
-- Ayn Rand -
We are born into this world unarmed - our mind is our only weapon.
-- Ayn Rand -
People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them while they’re reflecting too ... Reflections of reflections and echoes of echoes. No beginning and no end. No center and no purpose.
-- Ayn Rand -
Serenity comes from the ability to say “Yes†to existence. Courage comes from the ability to say “No†to the wrong choices made by others.
-- Ayn Rand -
Love is an expression and assertion of self-esteem, a response to one's own values in the person of another. One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves. It is one's own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns, and derives from love....
-- Ayn Rand -
One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary.
-- Ayn Rand -
Socialism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that his life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to society, that the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good.
-- Ayn Rand -
It does not matter that only a few in each generation will grasp and achieve the full reality of man's proper stature-and the rest will betray it. It is those few that move the world and give life its meaning-and it is those few that I have always sought to address. The rest are no concern of mine; it is not me or "The Fountainhead" that they will betray: it is their own souls.
-- Ayn Rand -
You must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the secondary consequences.
-- Ayn Rand -
Ethics is a code of values which guide our choices and actions and determine the purpose and course of our lives.
-- Ayn Rand -
There's nothing of any importance in life-except how well you do your work.
-- Ayn Rand -
She sat leaning back in her chair, looking ahead, knowing that he was as aware of her as she was of him. She found pleasure in the special self-consciousness it gave her. When she crossed her legs, when she leaned on her arm against the window sill, when she brushed her hair off her forehead - every movement of her body was underscored by a feeling the unadmitted words for which were: Is he seeing it?
-- Ayn Rand -
Politically, the goal of today’s dominant trend is statism. Philosophically, the goal is the obliteration of reason; psychologically, it is the erosion of ambition.
-- Ayn Rand -
The Argument from Intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence.
-- Ayn Rand -
When I die, I hope to go to Heaven, whatever the Hell that is.
-- Ayn Rand -
There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for me to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed or enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt.
-- Ayn Rand -
Tell me what a person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life. Show me the person they sleep with and I will tell you their valuation of themselves.
-- Ayn Rand -
Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equalled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism.
-- Ayn Rand -
You have been called selfish for the courage of acting on your own judgement and bearing sole responsibility for your own life. You have been called arrogant for your independent mind. You have been called cruel for your unyielding integrity. You have been calle anti social for the vision that made you venture upon undiscovered roads.
-- Ayn Rand -
One loses everything when one loses one's sense of humor.
-- Ayn Rand -
Definitions are the guardians of rationality, the first line of defense against the chaos of mental disintegration.
-- Ayn Rand -
Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today.
-- Ayn Rand -
Contrary to the ecologists, nature does not stand still and does not maintain the kind of equilibrium that guarantees the survival of any particular species - least of all the survival of her greatest and most fragile product: man.
-- Ayn Rand -
And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: 'I.
-- Ayn Rand -
I can accept anything, except what seems to be the easiest for most people: the half-way, the almost, the just-about, the in-between.
-- Ayn Rand -
The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.
-- Ayn Rand -
I've always thought that a feeling which changes never existed in the first place.
-- Ayn Rand -
She did not know the nature of her loneliness. The only words that named it were: This is not the world I expected.
-- Ayn Rand -
You have been the one encounter in my life that can never be repeated
-- Ayn Rand -
What is morality, she asked. Judgement to distinguish right and wrong, vision to see the truth, and courage to act upon it, dedication to that which is good, integrity to stand by the good at any price.
-- Ayn Rand -
A man's ego is the fountainhead of human progress.
-- Ayn Rand -
People, he thought, were as hungry for a sight of joy as he had always been--for a moment's relief from that gray load of suffering which seemed so inexplicable and unnecessary. He had never been able to understand why men should be unhappy.
-- Ayn Rand -
There are no evil thoughts except one; the refusal to think.
-- Ayn Rand -
You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.
-- Ayn Rand -
A man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions.... He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer--because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement.
-- Ayn Rand -
Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind.
-- Ayn Rand
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